Popular Participation in the Bangsamoro Rebellion

Anthropological analyses of nationalist action have most often privileged the propulsive role of elite-generated ideas and images, especially as they engage individuals at a less-than-conscious level and articulate the unreflected anxieties and aspirations of everyday social life. In other words, they make use of various versions of the notion of cul-

tural hegemony to account for the voluntary (and often enthusiastic) participation of members of subordinate classes in such movements.

Unofficial narratives of armed separatism from Cotabato suggest that ordinary adherents of armed nationalist movements are more discerning, and less ideologically incorporated, than anticipated by analyses keyed to the hegemonic effects of nationalist discourses. In Cotabato, Muslim nationalist ideological activity has not resulted in "the experiential starvation of the political imagination" of Muslim subordinates (Linger 1993, 18). Neither have subordinates become dependent upon the symbols issuing from "a nationalist ideological formation that has taken root in everyday life" to make sense of their experiences (Woost 1993, 516). To the contrary, many rank-and-file adherents of the armed separatist movement possessed both vigorous political imaginations and the words with which to exercise them. Ordinary Muslims expressed themselves in the unauthorized narratives of the armed rebellion. Rebel songs used a language notably independent of official separatist discourse to speak of social discontent as well as patriotism. While undeniably supportive of the rebellion, the songs also voiced distance from its official goals.

In the magical stories of the rebellion told by ordinary adherents, that distance begets resistance as storytellers "transform experience into agency" (Rebel 1989, 362). Here the critical assessments made of the rebellion by ordinary adherents questioned not only the claims and promises of movement leaders but also their fundamental aims and assumptions. While popular support for the separatist insurgency was substantial for most of the period of armed struggle and was expressed unofficially in songs and stories, at certain key junctures, most commonly where national interests collided with local concerns, some of those same narratives were used to voice resistance to official separatist rhetoric. Dissent was voiced obliquely (though unambiguously) through the absence of explicit agreement (some defecting rebel commanders did not suffer supernatural sanctions, some rebel corpses were not magically preserved). Those imaginative narratives were also charters for action. Divine decisions (to bestow or withdraw supernatural assistance) sanctioned popular choices to provide or withhold particular types of political support.

Although the concept of hegemony has been applied widely to explain the popular appeal of nationalisms, its analytical utility fails in the Cotabato case at the point where it is most needed—when one tries to understand the political actions of ordinary adherents of the

separatist movement. While leaders and followers of the separatist rebellion in Cotabato shared a common discursive framework, Muslim subordinates evaluated the pronouncements of movement leaders based on their separate shared experience. Those evaluations were autonomously symbolized, and they led at times to actions that ran athwart the official intentions of the separatist leadership. The independent expressions and efforts of rank-and-file adherents of the Muslim separatist movement remind us that the extent to which the "common sense" of subordinates has been reorganized by the workings of a nationalist ideology—the degree to which subordinates have been incorporated into the "imagined community" of the nation—is an empirical question, and one that should not be settled prior to a thorough search for unauthorized narratives. Analysts agree that cultural hegemony does most of its work not by defining what is legitimate but by establishing what is . Popular narratives that denied divine mercy to certain slain rebels or that declined divine retribution for certain rebel defectors, amounted to refusals of official reality. Despite the discursive efforts of movement leaders, ordinary adherents elected a separate reality, one that elevated local concerns above the Muslim nationalist cause.

The Bangsamoro Rebellion had considerable success relative to other separatist insurgencies despite the notable misalignment between the official discourse of the rebellion and the language, perceptions, and intentions of its ordinary adherents. While rank-and-file fighters and supporters held certain beliefs and motivations in common with movement leaders, they possessed others that were more situational—more "practical"—than those enunciated in the authorized discourse of Muslim nationalism. As long as the separate considerations of subordinate adherents were not contradicted by the official aims of movement leaders, popular mobilization was achieved. My interpretation of the separatist insurgency waged in Cotabato suggests that anthropological analyses of armed separatism (and of ethnonationalist collective action in general) could benefit from keener attention to the collateral concerns of ordinary adherents and less energy invested in searching for the hegemonic effects of nationalist ideas.